Archive for the 'News' Category

Obligatory possible return to occasional blogging post. Cliche apology for not writing enough. Excuses. Thoughts on the future of blog posts at this site. Complaining that spam commenting has brought the site owner back to a partially abandoned blog. Whining about self ban from facebook and twitter. Thinking said ban is encouraging lamely meta blog posting

Wondering if that should say blogging instead.

Remember the good old days of blogging for bloggingneworleans.com and posting at flashinsider.com name dropping

Etc etc

Thinking that brain fart posting may be interesting if done more than once every six months

a return to blogging? maybe, maybe not. I’m thinking I need to start short blogging here again. say a paragraph once a week via the wordpress iphone app spewed out during lunch at work once i get back to work that is… um yeah, baby bump #2 turned into a real boy at 21.5in, 8lb13.5oz just a couple days before the end of june, i attended his bris from the third most uncomfortable position (first being his, second being his mama’s), and now i’m just getting used to being a father in a true nuclear family (2.3 kids=2 kids + 3 cats)… I have less than two weeks leave in my paternity leave and I’m loving every moment I have at home… enough bragging though… is this paragraph long enough? I you want to see baby pics hit the flickr feed and make us a contact to see them or hit me up on facebook (we like keeping baby faces private) back to my fatherly duties, until next time…

Q And I’m not trying to play “gotcha,” but I wonder, when you look back over the long arc of your presidency, do you think, in retrospect, that you have made any mistakes? And if so, what is the single biggest mistake that you may have made?

THE PRESIDENT: …I’ve thought long and hard about Katrina — you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that and — is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you? …

Q …Mr. President, on New Orleans, you basically talked about a moment ago about the photo opportunity. But let’s talk about what you could have done to change the situation for the city of New Orleans to be further along in reconstruction than where it is now. And also, when you came — or began to run for the Oval Office about nine years ago or so, the James Byrd dragging death was residue on your campaign. And now at this time, 2009, we have the first black President. Could you tell us what you have seen on the issues of race, as you see it from the Oval Office?

THE PRESIDENT: Sure, thanks. First of all, we did get the $121 billion, more or less, passed, and it’s now being spent. Secondly, the school system is improving dramatically. Thirdly, people are beginning to move back into homes. This storm was a devastating storm, April, that required a lot of energy, a lot of focus and a lot of resources to get New Orleans up and running.

And has the reconstruction been perfect? No. Have things happened fairly quickly? Absolutely. And is there more to be done? You bet there is.

Q What more needs to be done?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, more people need to get in their houses. More people need to have their own home there. But the systems are in place to continue the reconstruction of New Orleans.

People said, well, the federal response was slow. Don’t tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs. Thirty thousand people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It’s a pretty quick response.

Could things have been done better? Absolutely. Absolutely. But when I hear people say, the federal response was slow, then what are they going to say to those chopper drivers, or the 30,000 that got pulled off the roofs?

The other part of the — look, I was affected by the TV after the elections — when I saw people saying, I never thought I would see the day that a black person would be elected President, and a lot of the people had tears streaming down their cheeks when they said it. And so I am — I am — consider myself fortunate to have a front-row seat on what is going to be an historic moment for the country. President-Elect Obama’s election does speak volumes about how far this country has come when it comes to racial relations. But there’s still work to do. There’s always going to be work to do to deal with people’s hearts.

And so I’m looking forward to it, really am. I think it’s going to be — it’s going to be an amazing — amazing moment.

The above pic is from brother in law Adam Devaney’s photostream on flickr. He is a volunteer firefighter in Surfside, TX and is working non-stop to help get the island back on its feet after Ike slammed into the community. In addition he is working hard to recover his business (he runs a beach home rental business that was in the midst of all kinds of neat stuff before the storm, Beach House Associates). Anyway, while he’s working hard over there the rest of us are thinking about him and all of the residents of the texas coast. Hopefully this recovery is smoother than ours has been.

Wanna see satelite pics of the entire effected area? Sure you do. NOAA put up pics after Katrina for new orleanians and they have done it again on the coast.

Today, September 11, 2008 makes one year since our last flood event in the Schleifstein household. Since today was the last day we could file suit against our old landlord to recover damages due to the flood that rained on Mandy and since we didn’t sue due mostly to lack of time, money, and a little apathy, I figure I can tell the world our story.
Imagine, if you will, the 6th anniversary of the WTC and pentagon airplane bombings (back in 2007). The country is morning its losses (NYC with the loudest voice) and the bulk of us are going through life the same way we did 6 years after OKC, the Atlanta Bombs, the first WTC bombing, Andrew, etc etc… Anyway (9/11/01 was horrible and may was always remember it as one of the national tragedies that occurred in the USA), Around 2pm it started to rain in New Orleans. Around 2:30 I got a frantic call from my very pregnant wife (8 months and on bed rest no less): “AAAAAA!!! the fan is leaking in the bedroom, water is everywhere, what do i do?!”
I asked if she was ok, she worried about the baby stuff, I asked if it was in the non-flooding room, yes, good, put buckets out to catch water (at this point I had no idea how bad it was), I’m going to come home now to take care of this…
Get time off… new Mandy call: “AAAA!!! the ceiling just fell!!! AAAA!!!”
It seems the water was to much for the drywall overhead and the ceiling (layer one) was starting to cave in.
Now I call landlord, downstairs neighbors, my parents, and run out the door at my office…
Get home… get mandy out of house with a few essentials… see water pouring from ceiling and AC in window (as it had been for months, and as the landlord had seen and been informed of)…
Mandy goes to my parents to stay for what becomes two weeks while we quickly move out of now unlivable place and into a new much much much better place with real heat and central air. Plus I move all non-damp stuff out of the now nasty old apartment while the downstairs neighbors also move out (the water entering our master bedroom spread in the floor to both downstairs bedrooms and the bathroom).
After moving the insurance company lets all of us know noone is covered even though we all had flood and renters and owners insurance (how nice we were all covered by the same company). Seems the roof had a few FEET of standing water on it due to bad repair work that eventually caused a leak the took out all kinds of stuff. The roof had been repaired numerous times and in fact we had reported leaks numerous times…plus the roof blew out a drain attached the the gutter and was gushing water into out bedroom via the window AC for a couple months (also reported and not fixed)…
Anyway, we thought about suing and even deduced that out lease would have allowed us to (stated something about allowing us to sue if damage due to agent of landlord, ie: roofer screwed up and didn’t fix it), but time became an issue and money too (we lost a kingsized bed, a number of bookshelves, books, a chest of drawers and more that had been paid for with a post-Katrina SBA loan, hello 6 grand in useless debt…the bed was mostly paid for by a gift from my parents and replaced out of pocket).
You see we just didn’t have the strength to go make our “1-call-that’s-all” or deal with the hassles that a small claims suit would bring…

wow this is really rambling…look bottom line, I wanted to get this story out as a new longwinded whine and end with the silver lining…
Annabel.
Yup she is our silver lining. Losing that apartment meant a better quality of life for my daughter. She is able to live in an apartment with real heat and a/c and windows that open and have screens, and all on the first floor in a relatively family friendly neighborhood near a number of nice parks and libraries and not in the city proper near rebuilding neighborhoods. She gets all this and I only have to pay for it with a long drive to work and debt out the wazoo from two floods in two apartments one of which she almost lived in.
Anyway (yet again) the above pic was taken by my beautiful wife before the ceiling started to cave in on her while the roof was starting to flood our bedroom. (Roof leak puddles are actually visible on googlemaps still).

sorry for the long whiny depressing post, better stuff in the future…
did I mention we gustav evac’d to mandy’s aunt ally’s place in iowa (outside of Davenport), I drove back with cats and mandy and annable flew back a few days later…oh and adam in in Freeport, TX near where Ike is supposed to hit and will be evac’ing to Houston to stay with my pa-in-law and other bro-in-law soon… And my dad is officially the ‘man who predicted the flood’… and my grandpa is getting back surgery next week for a disc problem… and my mom is not back from evac yet due to being in Atlanta for grandpa… and my sister is in NYC and will be bringing her beau down for Annabel’s first birthday on October 17th (can’t wait to see all the relatives at the party)…and and and…we’re done.

Yesterday Annabel hit ten months. Wow I can’t believe how far we’ve come. The day before she went to her first party (a woman in Mandy’s Meetup group’s son turned one and had a viking themed party, due to his name) and she did a great job playing with the six other babies although she was the youngest (ages 10-18 months).

Now we’re getting ready for her first birthday. We will be having a huge family party Sunday October 19th Saturday October 18th (if you got an evite be sure to save the date). Needless to say we are planning a great afternoon filled with cake and possibly ice cream.

More info as it shows up…

edit: oops the date of the coming party was wrong, check your evites for the correct one and see the edit above.